Barbet Schroeder Biography

Born in Teheran, Iran, Schroeder studied philosophy at Sorbonne University
in Paris, and started his career writing criticism for the famous film
journal, Cahiers du Cinéma. He then received an opportunity to work as an
assistant trainee to director Jean-Luc Godard for the film, Les Carabiniers
(1963). The experience led him to work on his own short black and white
16mm films, and establish his own production company, Les Films du
Losange.

At his new company, Schroeder produced two films by director Eric Rohmer, La
boulagère de Monceau (in which he also had a starring role) and La carrière
de Suzanne. After producing, appearing in and assisting with several other
films, Schroeder directed his first feature, More, in 1969.

Through the next decade, he became known not only in Europe, but in North
America for his work on documentaries like General Idi Amin Dada (1976), and
Koko, the Talking Gorilla (1977) as well as the feature films Le Vallée
(1972), and the controversial Maîtresse (1976) starring Gerard Depardieu
(he wrote the latter two).

He made his first film, Barfly, in the U.S. in the mid-1980s,
which was a critical success. He solidified his directing reputation with
an Oscar and a Golden Globe nominated film, Reversal of Fortune (1990),
starring Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close. His name once again hit the media
with his greatest commercial success in the 20th century, Single White
Female (1992), a thriller that followed a disturbed woman who begins
to adopt the persona of her roommate.